Agatha Christie's secret life as an archaeologist

She is one of the best-known crime writers of all time but few know the extent of Agatha Christie's archaeological pedigree.

Married in 1930 to eminent archaeologist Max Mallowan, Christie spent two decades living on excavation sites in the Middle East, writing her crime novels and helping out with her husband's work.

Travel by boat and on the Orient Express to far-flung places such as Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad inspired some of Christie's best-known works of detective fiction, including "Murder on the Orient Express," "Death on the Nile," and "Murder in Mesopotamia."

Now, 3,000-year-old ivory artifacts recovered by Mallowan between 1949 and 1963 from the ancient city of Nimrud, in what is now Iraq, and likely cleaned by his famous wife using cotton wool buds and face cream, go on display Monday at the British Museum in London.

Nimrud was a city in the Assyrian kingdom, which flourished between 900-612 B.C.. The ivories found by Mallowan and his team were originally made in what is now Syria and Lebanon and brought to Assyria as looted treasures....